


I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can.*

by lazlong



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Chauvinism, F/F, M/M, Other, Period-Typical Sexism, Racism, double-narrative, politically incorrect thoughts and statements and whatever can be extrapolated from such mindset
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:27:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1404847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazlong/pseuds/lazlong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am hard pressed to find the same child <br/>that looked upon me in wonder<br/>in hard-edged man that faces me right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Father, father, where are you going

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Mid-life crisis, pondering upon morality, relativity of values, narration of narrow-minded character ad nauseum.  
> If your triggers include faith, religion, racism, expecting the death of beloved ones - please skip reading this story.  
> There is nothing gruesome, but it can be offensive, if you had had traumatic experience in the past.  
> Thank you!  
> *********************************************************

Craig thinks, that world has gone mad.

**His mother is lying here, most probably dying, and there is not a thing that he can do.**

**At least not a thing that he can think of.**

It seems that lately there is very little that he can do.

**His ex-wife is heavy with a child from her young admirer, and is going to get married, and have her own cares.**

**She visited, of course, but had to leave.**

 

His daughter is busy with studies - somehow having discovered the lure of academic world in the tender age of fifteen, and she is away in some insane science-group.

**So the only one to come and stay with him and help out is his queer son that he had renounced once upon a time, and with him, this Kinney that he wanted dead at one point.**

 

Craig thinks, it should bother him more, make him feel grateful to his son, or may be angry, make him feel at least something.

**But it is**

hot and stuffy

**and hopeless, and his mother is dying**

most probably

**and Craig discovers**

**that he doesn't care much about his son**

**when his mother is about to depart.**

At least not in the way he used to,

and not in the terms he used to.

**It is hot, and stuffy,**

**and nothing really matters anymore in this silence of summer,**

**when numbness of approaching winter**

protrudes the very marrows of his bones,

has been here for years, hiding,

**is just starting the triumvirate of taking over now,**

**openly.**


	2. O do not walk so fast

Craig knows,  
he _thinks,_  
he knows that it is not characteristic for most of his contemporaries  
but

**he was always believer of tight-knit family,**

of never letting strangers into family life.  
He worked hard to support family,  
and then struggled to defend it to the best of his ability.

**He failed, and then sought solace in the hands of Mirjam,**   
**but after some time she left him / he left her,**   
**he doesn't remember anymore how it was.**

  _It doesn’t matter._

 

So he is alone with his dying mother,  
and he can not help thinking,  
that if he had listened to Jennifer about Justin,  
then he might have her besides him right now;

**no, not might have,**   
**but she would have been here for sure to stay,**   
**not only for flying visit.**

 

And Molly  
(because then she wouldn't have had time to go to her science - something);  
he is not so sure about Justin,  
he thinks that he do not know  
where his son would have been,  
but he knows, at least **  
**

**he _thinks_ he knows,**   
**he had to _know_ for sure,**   
**that there wouldn't be a life growing inside Jennifer.**

**Nevertheless,**   
**the most detesting thing is,**   
**whether that would be good or bad,**   
**he can not say.**

But he is past point of caring,  
there is only huge empty hole inside him,  
and he just doesn't know how to go on living.

**Impotence in all things and thoughts,**   
**this is him,**   
**now.**


	3. Speak father, speak to your little boy

**All his life he has been firm believer in rules.**   
**If You follow rules, study diligently, work hard,**   
**then the life will be good to You.**

**But life is not good to me, he thinks slowly,**   
**it is downright awful,**   
**and he feels cheated,**   
**somehow tricked into believing of the set of rules that doesn't apply to real world.**   
**Robbed of life .**

**Take a look of his son,**   
**take a good look - not that he cares anymore,**   
**he is sort of numb,**   
**but this is the closest example of the unfairness of life that he have right before his eyes:**

**his son did it wrong,**   
**all wrong things in the wrong time with wrong person,**   
**yet there is Kinney**   
**who holds him and is besides him,**   
**above him, under him, around him,**   
**always.**

My son,  
he did everything in inversion:  
he fell in love, or in fuck; he fucked around and then graduated school;  
and then got beaten up (no weird terms like "bashing", thank you very much);  
and this fucking criminal stayed by him,  
and he is studying right now, and he is working,  
both of them are working; he and this Kinney.

Come to think about it, they have occupied two rooms, and almost never leave.

Justin sits with his grandmother,  
and talks, and helps,  
and then he returns to rooms.

Kinney speaks on phone,  
and talks with my mother, and helps,  
(Kinney and helps!) and then returns to rooms.

It is as if they are living in their own world,  
with nobody else except themselves,  
and they do not care.

Justin is perfunctorily polite,  
and I am Craig or Father to him.  
But not Dad, never ever anymore.

My child, my firstborn son, my only son.  
I am hard pressed to find the same child that looked upon me in wonder  
in hard-edged man that faces me right now.

**My son, I always taught you to live proper life.**

**But You took all my teachings and threw in my face:**   
**no sex before marriage - you went out to red district and basically picked up a whore.**

**It was not a girl three years junior you**   
**(optimal age-gap, as numerous research articles have proved),**   
**but a man twelve years senior you.**

**No,**   
**You did not fuck her,**   
**he fucked you.**


	4. Or else I shall be lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: racism, bad-mouthing religion, hell knows what else.  
> If in doubt, skip.

**I just do not know what to do and how to live anymore.**

**I am well over forty,**   
**my old beliefs turned out to be wrong,**   
**and I do not know new rules.**

I gave up the management of Taylor electronics to my substitute,

and I consult him over telephone.  
I say, family emergency.

But the truth is,  
I do not care anymore,  
I can not make myself care about living much more.

As soon as my mother is gone,  
I think I will go as well.

After all, there is no one I am needed to.

**Duty.**   
**Do your duty and you will be fine.**   
**What a lie.**

So I sit at my mother's kitchen,  
and stare at the yard and observe.  
I think, never ever I had been so quite in my life.

It all seemed so important, I wanted so much for Justin,  
I wanted easier, proper life for him:

Dartmoor, and then hand my business,  
on a silver plate,  
so that he haven't struggle so much as I did,  
and then may be some grandchildren

And when I think about my prayers,  
I want to laugh myself in face:

“Dear Lord, please not with Daphne..":  
not with that Daphne, for she is black and poor, and  
“Dear Lord, not that Jenise in country club who flirts,  
for she comes from Europe and could have loose moral,  
and I suspect that she could be Lutheran or something like that  
and it is bad to have wrong faith in home.”

**And to think**   
**that I used to worry about him hooking up with black or poor or Lutheran girl.**

**Oh, he did not disappoint me,**   
**not at all,**   
**if I come to think about it.**

**He did not _hook up_ ,**   
**he _choose for a partner_**   
**white and rich and Catholic**   
**just there is a catch**   
**like in all old-fashioned fairy-tales**   
**my mother was so found of telling**   
**late in night.**

**The white, and rich and Catholic**   
**is**   
**man.**

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed. Just rabid bunny that bit me and refused to let me live peacefully until I wrote it down. Properly.  
> -  
> (*) Story of Isaac, by Leonard Cohen

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Diēs caniculārēs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2060988) by [lazlong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazlong/pseuds/lazlong)




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